Why Sustainability is the Future of Housing

There’s a lot you can learn from the future, or at least, how different eras pictured the future. 

Take the future of housing, for example. The House of Tomorrow at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, inspired by a hexagonal building, featured broad windows on all sides and even its own airplane hangar. The house was fitted with technologies new to the Depression-era like central air conditioning and an electric dishwasher. 

Starting in the late 1950s, Disneyland featured the Monsanto House of the Future as an attraction, where guests could see microwaves, dimming ceiling lights and an intercom system that everyone in the then-distant 1980s would surely be using. 

In the 1980s, a House of the Future opened in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona that was run by Motorola microprocessors and resembled a a futuristic copper bunker, half-subterranean to avoid the desert heat. In the year 2000, a House of the Future in Wales opened that featured locally-sourced green building materials and net-zero carbon emissions. 

Though these model homes were more science fiction than science fact when they were built, they can tell us something important about the actual trend of houses in the future. It isn’t so much the fancy gadgets that would make everyday life seemingly easier, but how a house could stand the test of time. 

Yet sustainable materials are only one part of the equation. Houses of futures past and present may function as interesting thought experiments, but they do not address a key question: how a house will exist in the cities of the future. 

When it comes to the many flavors of sustainable development, renewable energy, decarbonization technologies and advanced agricultural methods probably spring to mind ahead of sustainable cities. Yet ensuring our metropolitan areas contribute to a global net good is one of the biggest challenges of sustainable development. 

We built this city 

As the world becomes more and more urbanized, some cities will see growth rates in a matter of decades that other cities took centuries to realize. For example, in the 1940s, the city of Kinshasa (then called Léopoldville) boasted a population of just over 50,000. Eighty years later, 17 million people call it home, making it Africa’s most populous city. 

This explosive population trend is hardly unique to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “In the 1960s, when Côte d’Ivoire became independent, some 15 percent of the population lived in urban areas,” said the country’s Minister of Construction, Housing and Urban Planning, Bruno Nabagné Koné. “Now 53 percent of the population is urbanized. By 2050, between 75-80 percent of the population is expected to be living in urban areas. So you can see over the span of some 60 years, where many European countries took centuries.” 

Minister Koné made this point at the UNIDO “Bridge for Cities” conference in Vienna in October 2024. Under the theme “Innovative Solutions for the Cities of Tomorrow,” the conference looked at the impact of urbanization on global development, especially in terms of housing. 

The pace of urbanization is staggering. In 1960, according to the World Development Indicators from the World Bank, a third of the global population lived in cities. By 2023, that number had reached 57 percent – with no sign of slowing down. 

Such growth is not even, however. Sub-Saharan African countries have seen waves of people moving to cities over the past 60 years. Botswana, for example, has witnessed one of the most dramatic increases, up from just 3 percent urbanized in 1960 to 73 percent in 2023. The East Asia & Pacific region has experienced similar spikes and jumped from 17 percent urbanization in 1960 to 60 percent in 2023. 

Slum like it hot 

All those people moving into urban areas need a place to stay. More often than not the low-cost and affordable housing supply cannot keep up with housing demand, resulting in both higher prices and more and more precarious living arrangements. 

These slums are not always haphazard settlements on the outskirts of cities. The Rochina favela in Rio de Janeiro, the country’s largest, is very close to skyscrapers and more affluent areas, providing close access to jobs. After all, economic opportunities have long been one of the main reasons for migration. 

For most of the world, the challenge to offer a suitable space for their growing urban populations is key not just to ensure economic growth but to curb negative environmental impacts. The issue is addressed within the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Target 11.1 aims to “ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums” by 2030. Success is measured in the reduction of the proportion of the urban population living in “slums, informal settlements or inadequate housing.” 

With only a few years until the 2030 deadline, the outlook is not good. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest percentage of its urban population living in slums at just over 53 percent, according to the UN. What’s more, the region is expected to have 360 million more people living in precarious conditions by 2030. 

If you build it, they will come 

Back at the “Bridge for Cities” event, several solutions were floated. 

Côte d’Ivoire’s Minister Koné said that cities should be seen as part of the solution, not the problem: “We are systematically promoting a favorable environment in our cities,” he said. “That means building cities that contribute economically. Cities that are a conducive environment to quality of life or human development and at the same time cities that are able to tackle today’s challenges, in particular climate change.” 

He outlined his country’s three-point plan, which includes implementing an overarching urban planning scheme across dozens of regional capitals, while creating building and construction rules to ensure compliance. 

“The third component is facilitating access to housing and accommodation which is essential, above all, in countries where you have some 30-40 percent of the population living below the poverty threshold,” Koné said. 

In countries around the world, the price of housing compared to income has been steadily increasing. For large cities housing affordability is often the main policy challenge, with zoning changes, rent control, housing vouchers and tax credits being some of the tools leaders can use to address the issue. 

Needless to say, there are many side benefits that come from getting people into better places to live. According to a 2017 study in the journal Lancet Planet Health, an innovative new home design using modern building materials reduced the number of mosquitoes indoors, which reduced the instances (and spread) of malaria. 

Built to last 

“Our country is particularly vulnerable to extreme climate events, which is why we need to take urgent measures in order to protect our population and our environment,” said Panama’s Deputy Minister of Territorial Planning Frank Osorio Abadía at the conference. “We are grappling with pressing challenges such as rising housing costs, water scarcity, growing urban inequality, the effects of climate change and inadequate transport infrastructure.” 

Like Côte d’Ivoire, Panama is implementing policies promoting land use planning and access to housing. Minister Abadía added that a holistic approach to urban planning and sustainable infrastructure can stimulate private investment. “We have set up contacts with a number of private sector companies, taking into account the specific and very diverse features of the territory.” 

That focus on how climate change affects urban housing is particularly important. According to UN-Habitat, the United Nations program for human settlements and sustainable development, cities need up to US$5.4 trillion annually for climate resilient infrastructure. To put this into perspective: “In 2021-2022, cities only secured US$831 billion per year for climate action,” a UN-Habitat report noted. 

Richard Bellingham, Director of the University of Strathclyde’s Institute for Future Cities in Scotland, said that urban sustainability needs to be socially and economically acceptable. In addition to sustainable housing, ensuring adequate healthcare, jobs and safety is critical, he argued. “How are they going to deliver? By doing what citizens care about,” he said. 

A century of progress 

It has been nearly 100 years since the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair where the House of Tomorrow was presented. UNIDO’s “Bridge for Cities” conference presented a video of what the urban landscape might look like in the future: Glittering, impossibly high high-rises, skyscrapers overflowing with greenery, technology blending with everyday life and e-mobile transportation offering greater connection. 

One hundred years from now, that vision may be as quaintly anachronistic as the House of Tomorrow’s octagonal glass walls and “iceless” refrigerators. Yet one thing is unlikely to change: The homes and cities of the next century will need to be sustainably built, climate friendly and safe and enjoyable places for the people who live there.